A Wellington marine centre lost over half of its marine life in a devastating act of vandalism overnight.

Arriving to the centre at Wellington’s historic bait shed at about 10am, Island Bay Marine Education Centre discovery programme manager Julian Hodge found the water system had been dosed with chlorinated detergent, poisonous to many of the marine species in the tanks.

”I found a whole load of bubbles coming out of our tanks and gutters and a whole lot of our fish were dead, and many were in the process of dying.”

While immediate attempts were made to move distressed fish to uncontaminated water and centre staff, volunteers and the Fire Service were called in to flush out the tanks with fresh sea water, many marine animals were lost or had to be euthanised.

”We expect over the next two or three days, there will be quite a few more casualties as well.”

The centre’s larger animals, plus the starfish, seahorses, and crabs, mostly survived though others, like the pipe fish, had not.

”We’ve lost fish here that have been with us for 16 years.”

What sort of sadistic bastard poisons the water at a marine centre? The Island Bay Marine Education Centre is a great resource, and I can’t believe anyone would target them deliberately But if it was a so called prank, it was a nasty sadistic one.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, December 30th, 2012 at 10:00 am and is filed under New Zealand.
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45 Responses to “Bastards”

Our young people have been brought up on a diet of rubbish “entertainment” such as Jackass,violent video games aand negative music from the ghettoes of Los Angeles.
Families ,which barely exist as such,struggle to discipline them as our political establishment teaches the ratbags they have rights like everyone else and should not be subject to punishment.

As the good book says with it’s thousands of years of wisdom,You reap as you sow.

Isn’t the Marine Education Centre controversial due to its location on the South Coast? I seem to recall some controversy over a resource consent application, but that was a few years ago. Seems to be a bit more than a random vandalism in that it had to be planned with the chlorine detergent purchased and then the centre broken into before the water was poisoned.

~Quite right ‘kowtow’…..give them some of that ol’time religion & a damn good thrashing & while we’re at it, bring back the stocks. After all we never had instances of vandalism or anti social behaviour back in our day did we?~

…”As the good book says with it’s thousands of years of wisdom”…..pontificate on.

Ha ha. Seeing as no one here yet knows who committed this act or why, it is pointless to ascribes causes or advocate penalties.
Yes, the marine education centre has been controversial with its development plans. Breaking in and pouring chlorine into the tanks seems quite calculated, but who can say yet who was responsible or what the motive may have been?

“Michael Says:
Isn’t the Marine Education Centre controversial due to its location on the South Coast? I seem to recall some controversy over a resource consent application, but that was a few years ago.”

That was about the Royal New Zealand Fish Zoo, to be built a few kilometers further around the coast line, the Island Bay Marine Education Centre is well established and has been there for years.

It’ll be someone with an axe to grind. Drunken youths would break the tanks, or piss in them, or graffiti on the walls, or some other equivalent teenage posturing. Putting bleach in the lines presumably takes a bit more thought – unless there were just some taps that someone could turn or something. If they had to bring the bleach with them, connect it, then run it in…..then definitely some sort of nutters. Green ones no doubt.

The only true crime here is that those animals had no protection in place. Unfortunately security measures will fall back on us if we don’t want to hear of such mindless acts of ? We can’t call it vandalism so what do we call it?

Alan Wilkinson (1,404) Says:
December 30th, 2012 at 10:42 am
These people are morons, product of public education and indiscriminate “welfare”. They need to be put to work and made responsible for their own existence but this has never happened.

So you know who did this or you are just making a pompous generalisation

@Mark, not pompous just accurate description for those who commit mindless vandalism. However, if you’d bothered to read further you would have seen I changed my mind about the culprit and think it was more likely deliberate sabotage by a nutter.

Kim Workman will now come along and tell us not to worry as this sort of thing statistically doesn’t happen “very often”…

I suppose he might, and I can well imagine the circumstances in which he would: when some populist politician leaps on an unusual occurrence to propose a “solution” that interferes with the rights of law-abiding citizens to do as they please.

Something like restricting or banning the sale of bleach, or perhaps a curfew. Thank goodness Simon “I never saw a right I didn’t want to squash” Power is gone, or we’d be subject to randon Janola searches come Monday morning.

I’m not sure why so many on the Right are prepared to sacrifice their civil liberties (and call civil libertarians “panty waists” and the like) in the name of “law ‘n’ order” when, in theory, the Right is meant to stand for individual freedom and liberty. Perhaps it’s a deep-seated masochism, which is what gives rise to steamy fantasises of being bossed around by the likes of Judith Collins.

Now now Rex…let me explain to you why righties like ACToids and even some of the thinking libertarians agree with things like three strikes…”freedom” is always limited, no matter which particular version of liberalism or libertarianism one subscribes to…no-one has the unfettered to right to exercise their rights if to do so would impinge upon the rights of others…at least those others’ rights to be unmolested going about their business…Think of it as the physical version of the lack of a “right” to shout “fire” in a crowded theatre….

Not entirely applicable to the deliberate killing of some fish at a marine centre, but you get my drift…

Put another way, I am quite comfortable with my non-existent “right” to punch you in the head when I dont agree with you being curtailed, as I’m sure you are quite comfortable having your “right” to do the same to me similarly limited…The alternative is anarchy, and that only works in stage one philosophy up at the local ivory tower…

Then let me explain to you why libertarians would object if I decided instead to punch you in the head and the government reacted by passing a law which said Kiwiblog commenters had to walk round with their wrists manacled because clearly none of them could control themselves, based on this one example… oh wait, I think I just did.

Talking of noses, every time I get a snotty one in Australia I have to hand over photo ID and be logged in a national register just in case I’ve decided to become a part time meth cook. Whereas when I developed one in NZ I was told Mr Smiley and Mr Power-Crazed had decided that the risk you might be a meth cook was enough to deny me the right to the most efficacious medication.

Now call me crazy, but I can’t see why the NZ solution is superior to the Australian (though that in itself is intrusive enough).

I wonder what will come to drive us to want to chip everyone with a gps chip? or will we go the way of the American and want to carry a pistolla? We have a gun culture but we don’t worship it as a defensive weapon but as primarily a tool. A very small population and i would like to believe a peaceful demeanor.

I wonder what will come to drive us to want to chip everyone with a gps chip?

The belief, enunciated by David Garrett above but also held by many others, that it is okay to trade freedom for “safety” (which is in itself illusory).

We cannot stop me cooking meth by banning you from the purchase of antihistamines,nor can we stop me pouring bleach into a fish tank by making it difficult or impossible for you to purcahse when all you’ve ever done, or intended to do, with it is whiten your whites and scrub your grouting.

Just as, for instance, removing the defence of provocation didn’t stop a single psychotic murderer going free, as none ever did to begin with – at least not on those grounds. Those who are determined to do evil will find a way, and all the rights and liberties we sacrifice will only make it harder, not impossible.

For as Franklin said, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety”.

kowtow – don’t know why it’s necessary to rip off everyone’s handles at the beginning of your high quality comments. Basically means I don’t read any of them. Good luck with whatever it is you’re trying to get across.

Alan – well, pretty silly thing to say wasn’t it? That’s why you had more than one person point it out. I just did it in a different way. And I think you realised that, so good on you for having a second thought. Don’t really care who are or aren’t the majority of offenders of this nature are, just want them caught.

There is no hook to get off. I could find counter-examples in ten seconds in Google. Then you would find 10 examples and then I would find 10 counter-example. Pointless. Mindless. Boring.

My point/beef has absoultely NOTHING to do with whomever you want to stereotype as being the culprit. e.g, I could say:

all welfare beneficiares commit vandalism;
all white haired middle aged business men are corporate criminals;
all psyhcos are serial killers;
all Muslims are terrorists

Doesn’t change my point. The problem is not WHO you choose to stereotype. It’s the fact that you DO, without any evidence to suggest who commited the crime or why.

Just as milkenmild said more succinctly “the Kiwiblog detectives still haven’t solved…although some were very sure of the ‘type’ of person it would be”

I prefer to let the police do the hunting, the courts do the decision making and the judges decide what punishment is required rather than gesticulating wildly and pointlessly in public forums about “who’s responsible, because they’re all the same them lot”.

It damages the fabric of society & law doing what you do in a public forum but I guess it doesn’t matter because there’s a whole bunch of people in this forum who would only be too happy to go on about it ad infinitum and reinforce their narrow minded views of the world.

In summary, I think a statement like that is exactly that, narrow minded – and I think you realised that as you wrote it and so came up with another comment to follow. So good on you.

I put some pretty big words in there, pretty good for a moron with a public education, right? (ew look, it’s ANOTHER stereotype)

@itstricky, what a lot of nonsense. The crime itself points to the criminal just as your actions define your character. It is evidence. At first I took it to be simple mindless vandalism and analyzed the character involved on that basis. However, as I said, on further reflection the use of premeditated poison points instead to a motivated nutcase.

However, had it been mindless vandalism I stand by my analysis of what produced that characteristic. Your empty assertion you could find counter examples is worthless. Likewise your implied presumption that the logic is reversible. It is not since fortunately a responsible work ethic is not the only inhibition to mindless vandalism. Likewise not all products of public education are morons, but unfortunately a sizeable number are. Using big words is not necessarily a reliable discriminator.

Speaking the truth does not damage the fabric of society and law – it strengthens it. Shutting your eyes does the opposite. As for speculating on the kind of culprits likely to have committed a crime we neither need nor care about your approval. Our accuracy will be judged by the eventual outcome.

Alan – Speaking the truth! Shutting your eyes! LOL! Since when does a vague generalisation about a perpertrator become the truth?

Lucky I don’t live next door to you – you’d likely come out and point the finger at me for stealing the sugar out of your pantry because I happened to be drinking a cup of coffee on my balcony!

It’s lucky that there are people out there who can sum up a crime so quickly and come up with a culprit – it’s a surprise we have so many criminals when you are solving the cases so quickly with your sweeping analysis of who-dun-it! Maybe you’ve watched a few too many episodes of CSI.

As for the rest of it, you’ve taken yourself rather seriously all of a sudden! You were the one who came up about the generalisation about crime relating to public education – not me – remember – oh – all of a sudden people with a public education can spell – quick, tell the press!

@itstricky, you risk slipping into the publicly-educated moron category since apparently the difference between “some” and “all” as a logical qualifier is beyond your grasp, your “vague generalisation about a perpetrator” is not my specific identification of the State policies, and organisations that produce mindless vandals and your sugar theft comparison has no relevance or correspondence whatever.

And FWIW I am also publicly-educated and fully aware of the range in quality of its products.

Alan
You started by saying:
‘These people are morons, product of public education and indiscriminate “welfare”.’
Four hours later, you decided:
‘on second thoughts it seems much more likely this was a nutter than a moron.’
Topday you are dancing on the head of some pin about the logic of your statements about the respective motivations of ‘morons’ versus ‘nutters’. Very good. Please keep up the entertainment.

@mm, nope, just trying, in vain apparently, to explain basic English comprehension. Eg: ‘These people are morons, product of public education and indiscriminate “welfare”’ does not mean that all products of public education and/or welfare are morons.

However I am starting to become convinced that all products of public education who are Leftists are morons.